Wednesday, February 29, 2012

30 Days of Zeitgeist - Day 20

Over the past decade, he internet has radically changed how people find, connect, communicate and collaborate with each other. The rapid rate of social movement awareness and adoption is directly attributable to the ability to instantaneously share information across town and around the world. Live video streams of protests and popular breakthrough film series like Zeitgeist would not be possible without the technological engineering feats of the infrastructure that is the world wide web. Social media sites and services, such as Twitter, Facebook and Google products, are increasingly vital to the rapid development and planning for these various causes, however, and that concentration of resources is causing them to become targets for the powerful and influential. Facebook, as a corporation, has recently gone public, opening themselves up to investor influence, pressuring them to further monetize their user-base, causing potential privacy issues with users of the site. Twitter recently altered their censorship policies to be in line with various governmental demands to censor undesirable information. Google's YouTube and search services have also been subject to government restrictions around the world, making it harder to share and find pertinent information. PayPal, the global payment processor that many organizations use to accept donations also has a long and growing history of abusing their powerful position by freezing assets, closing accounts and even refusing to accept donations on behalf of certain groups, like WikiLeaks, because of government pressure. Fortunately, all of these sites and services have alternatives, many of which are open source, non-corporate owned, and not adherent to arbitrary government opinion. The TZMNetwork is a social networking site for Zeitgeist Movement activists, and has recently undergone major renovation. Occupii is a similar site, mainly for Occupy Movement activists. The Diaspora* project is a general use social network that is based on an open source platform. Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not based on debt, not controlled by a government or corporate interest, and is open source, so anyone can use it. All of these, and more, are being continuously updated and improved upon by volunteers, who are working together for a better world for all people.